Live: This Is The Kit

The Deaf Institute

5th March

9/10

This is the Kit delivered an intimate, friendly performance showing off their new (so new, it’s not even out yet) album, Bashed Out. After the crowd is suitably warmed up by Rozi Plain (whose band, confusingly, are This is the Kit on slightly different instruments), Kate Stables and her band take the stage to play their own gentle brand of folk rock. Largely a showcase for next month’s Bashed Out, Stables and co. shine throughout, with relatively traditional folk sounds combined with huge, shimmering lead guitar that brings to mind Belle and Sebastian at their most soaring.

The set flies by, with tracks like ‘Misunderstanding’ and ‘Nits’ drifting by in a beautiful haze, whilst apocalypse song ‘Silver John’ moves into louder, grander territory. The music is consistently excellent, but This is the Kit make the evening a magical one through their intimacy with the crowd—they all head into the audience to start chatting after both Plain’s set and their own, and maintain a light-hearted, warm rapport with the crowd throughout. A couple even get engaged during the set, with a wry request from Stables for a member of the crowd to “turn around please,” it’s clear that tour dates with The National have taught the band the art of showmanship.

If there is any criticism, it’s only that the songs all have a largely similar mood, with the tempo only really rising in a couple of songs. But the rarity of the explosions of sound perhaps only make them even more cathartic, and the steady haze the sound tends to stay in is a gorgeous one—a steady, drifting fog that slowly envelops the audience and carries them through Stables’ delicate musings. As the crowd is finally pulled from its reverie after the fan requested first single, ‘Two Wooden Spoons’, it’s clear that This is the Kit have something very special indeed.